Charles-François Brisseau de Mirbel

Who was Charles-François Brisseau de Mirbel?

Charles-François Brisseau de Mirbel was a French botanist and politician. He was a founder of the science of plant cytology.

A native Parisian, at the age of twenty, he became an assistant-naturalist with the French National Museum of Natural History. While there he began to examine plant tissue under a microscope.

In 1802, Mirbel published his treatise Traité d'anatomie et de physiologie végétale which established his position as a founder of cytology, plant histology and plant physiology in France. He proposed that all plant tissue is modified from parenchyma. His observation, in 1809, that each plant cell is contained in a continuous membrane, remains a central contribution to cytology.

In 1803, Mirbel obtained the post of superintendent of the gardens of Napoleon's Château de Malmaison. There he studied and published on structure of plant tissue and the development of plant organs. He also studied and described the genus Marchantia of liverworts. His 1802 treatise and these publications enabled him, in 1808, to join the French Academy of Sciences and to become the chair of the botany department of the Sorbonne. His combined tissue studies were published in 1815 as Eléments de physiologie végétale et de botanique.